FORGIVE JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER Junichiro Koizumi if he seems at all impatient during his White House dinner tonight. The toasts and backslapping with George Bush may provide an ego boost, but tomorrow the real fun begins, when the president accompanies Koizumi on a tour of Graceland. That might be small hat for some foreign dignitaries, but not for the crooning premier who has released a CD of his favorite Elvis Presley tunes and once sang an Elvis duet with Tom Cruise.

Koizumi rides into Washington today as the most colorful, telegenic, and recognizable Japanese leader of the postwar era. He has few closer chums on the world stage than Bush, who often pals around with Koizumi as if he were an old chum from Yale. The two men boast an “exceptional personal relationship,” says James Kelly, a former State Department official. Indeed, Koizumi is in many ways the Tony Blair of East Asia.